


The Weather Outside is Frightful

by murderofonerose (atmilliways)



Series: 12 Days of Dethmas 2020 [7]
Category: Metalocalypse (Cartoon)
Genre: 12 Days of Dethmas, Everyone's still figuring this shit out, Godklok, M/M, Post-DSR, Skwisgaar gets control over snow, Toki gets... a low body temperature and immunity to cold?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:47:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28181865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atmilliways/pseuds/murderofonerose
Summary: It was the first night since the rescue, the first night since Toki had been cleared by the Mordland doctors to sleep in his own room again . . . and he couldn’t sleep. He’d spent hours lying in bed, staring up at glow-in-the-dark stars he’d glued to the ceiling back what seemed like a billion years ago and he could. Not. Do it anymore.
Relationships: Skwisgaar Skwigelf/Toki Wartooth
Series: 12 Days of Dethmas 2020 [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2055183
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10





	The Weather Outside is Frightful

**Author's Note:**

> **Dec 19 - Fun in the snow!**
> 
> "Fun." Well. They do manage to find something they enjoy in the experience.

It was the first night since the rescue, the first night since Toki had been cleared by the Mordland doctors to sleep in his own room again . . . and he couldn’t sleep. He’d spent hours lying in bed, staring up at glow-in-the-dark stars he’d glued to the ceiling back what seemed like a billion years ago and he could. Not. Do it anymore. 

Real stars. He needed to see _real_ stars. 

His eyes hurt like something was gently but firmly pressing them deeper into his skull, and he counted exactly two-thousand and twenty steps between his bedroom and the nearest ground floor exit onto the grounds. It didn’t bother him, when he got there, that the flagstones around the doorway were sparkling with frost. Like he’d been trying to tell the doctors for weeks, he could still tell the differences between hot and cold, just didn’t exactly _feel_ it. Hadn’t ever since that red light had hit them and then split the ceiling above their heads (or had it been the other way around?), and he and his brothers had made at least one of his death-stained torturers _stop_. 

So Toki stepped out into the snow and it crunched under his slippers, and he didn’t care. He just followed the blanketed path into a thicket of trees until it dead-ended in a wide circular clearing. 

In the center of the clearing, Skwisgaar stood with his back to Mordhaus, one hand outstretched. Toki stopped when he saw him, not necessarily prepared for company . . . but as he watched, flecks of the falling snow circled around the other guitarist’s hand like a glove several sizes too big, then formed a miniature cyclone over the center of his palm, then formed a floating sphere, then dispersed as though nothing out of the ordinary had just been going on. 

Curious, Toki walked closer with intentionally loud footsteps and smiled wanly when Skwisgaar whipped around to look at him. “Hei.”

“. . . Hej.” Skwisgaar’s breath formed a ghostly haze in the freezing air. “Didn’ts know you was ups.”

“Couldn’t sleeps.” Toki pulled up even with him on the path, looking up at the sky. When he saw that it was too clouded over for any stars to show, he sighed. “Thoughts a walk might helps. What were you doings just now?”

The blond shrugged. Unlike Toki, he was actually wearing a jacket and boots, and there was a glove on the hand that he hadn’t been holding up before. “Practicings.”

Instinctively Toki reached for the bare hand, looking over the lines of Skwisgaar’s palm and briefly feeling as though he was falling into a roadmap that he didn’t know how to read—but he shook it off and rubbed at the stiff fingers that he could tell were bone-cold. “You’re gonna gets frostbites like this. How long you been outs here? And how long since you started beings able to does . . . that?”

“You knows since when.” Skwisgaar’s hand, despite the stiffness, stretched to clasp around Toki’s. “Natten vi räddade dig.”[1]

Toki nodded, because he understood completely . . . even though, at the same time, he didn’t understand shit and doubted that Skwisgaar did either. All of this god stuff, and being destined to save the world or something, and a Church dedicated entirely to them and now run by their former manager who had literally died and returned from the dead? What _was_ any of that? But he couldn’t deny that it was all real. They’d all been feeling it lately. 

“I don’t wants you to freeze,” Toki said softly, looking him straight in the eye, more direct than he’d ever dared to be before. Being kidnapped and held captive for a longass time had burned a lot of the hesitation right out of him. 

Skwisgaar quirked one perfect blonde eyebrow. “I clouds say the same to yous, little Toki.”

“Don’t really feels it these days,” Toki replied with a shrug. “But thanks.” He looked down at the hand holding his, then back up again with a small smile. “Shoulds have figures I finds you practicings. Ams all you ever does. Why don’ts you ever takes a break, Skwisgaar?”

A terrible look suddenly overtook the taller man’s face. “I can’ts. I gots to be readies. Othersways, whats if. . . .”

Toki nodded thoughtfully. Whatever was coming was bigger than any show they’d ever played, and those had been nerve-wracking enough. He remembered, from his own attempts at solo performances, the terrible weight of the audience’s expectations . . . but the audience couldn’t float you into the air and crush you like a bug just by looking at you, like that Half-Man thing they’d seen at the so-called final concert in Reykjavík. If they had powers, they damned well better know how to use them, or they could all die. 

Leave it to Skwisgaar to take that knowledge and turn it into just as much a tic as constantly practicing on his guitar. 

“Buts you can’t wears yours-selve out likes this,” Toki murmured, reaching with his free hand to up Skwisgaar’s cold, porcelain cheek. “You still gotta take cares, that’s what’s the doctors keeps tellin’s me—and I don’t wants nothing bads to happens to yous, so that’s am what I tells _you_ , too. Okays?” He was surprised to feel tears in his eyes; he hadn’t cried since being liberated from that awful basement, not once. The thought of losing the lead guitarist, the push to his pull both onstage and in life, was somehow even worse than that place. 

Skwisgaar leaned forward into the touch, until their foreheads bumped. He let out a deep exhale, a fine steam swirling around their faces and mingling with Toki’s breath, which should have been just as visible but, mysteriously, wasn’t. “Okays. Jag lovar.”[2] Then he offered the ghost of a smirk and added, “As longs as you promise yous will practice somes, not like with yous crapskies guitar playing.”

Toki kissed him. It was as easy as laughing—which he did too, the sound muffled by the other man kissing back with just as much feeling. This thing, this push and pull that had been between them for years, was a lot older than any eldritch powers they suddenly had access to, and it was worth protecting. 

They had never done _this_ before, and that was a crying fucking shame because it was suddenly as necessary as breathing. Skwisgaar wrapped his arms around Toki and cradled him close. He was so gentle, as though afraid that if he held Toki too hard the younger man would either break or turn out to be just a mirage. But his kiss—

His kiss was desperate in a way that threatened to break Toki’s heart. As though all Skwisgaar wanted was to protect him, but knew, _knew_ that he couldn’t. 

Toki remembered all the times Skwisgaar had tried to protect or comfort him. At driving school. Any time his parents visited. In that IKEA the time they’d cried together. Bicentennial quarters. Trying to save his life at the Guitariganza event even after that awful tell-all book he’d written. The tears were definitely rolling down his cheeks now and left trails on his skin that crackled slightly in the cold air. 

After several long minutes, the kiss ebbed. Skwisgaar gave a little chuckle of his own—totally sounded like he’d been crying too, breathy and trembling, but it was hard to see for sure in the weak winter moonlight. “You wants to does that for a longs time, eh little Toki?”

This was a chance, Toki realized, to fall back into their usual pattern and laugh the moment off. Skwisgaar was giving him an out . . . if he wanted one. A year ago, maybe he would have taken it.

He remembered Skwisgaar telling him shakily on another snowy night, years ago, _I will sees you in Valhallska._

“Yeah,” Toki said softly. “I has. Sorties I’ve beens so . . . you knows.” He sniffled, trying to get his damned nose to stop running. “Ams a really stupids guy whats acts like a brats. I shoulds has practiced like you always tolds me too. I shoulds have been sittings with you at the funeral and never gots kidsnapped in the forst place, but thanks you so _fuckings much_ for comings to rescues me. You savesed my life. I gots to say thanks yous to the other guys too, buts . . . you’s here rights now. And you ams special.” Reaching up, he touched Skwisgaar’s hair, brushing snowflakes from the golden strands. “So specials. . . .”

That’s when they both noticed that snowflakes were hanging in the air around them, too. Hundreds of them hanging suspended in clusters in the shape of—

“A very special saps whats has made the snow falls in shapes of hearts,” Toki giggled. 

“I didn’ts,” Skwisgaar mumbled, cheeks reddening, but he still had his arms around Toki so he couldn’t have been _too_ put out. 

“You dids, looks at them!” Toki caught one in his palm. “Sees?”

“I . . . heugh.” He looked around and the snow began to drift down again. “Ams the price of masterings a new skill, Toki. Don’t know what else to tells you.”

Toki kissed him again with a faux-thoughtful hum. “How ‘bouts . . . you tells me if you want to goes inside now and does more of this?”

For the first time that night, Skwisgaar grinned. “Ja. Ja, thats I can do’s.”

* * *

1I was aiming for "Since the nights we got you back," but the best I could get out of Google Translate was "The night we saved you." Clearly I am the victim here. Return to text

2"I promise." Return to text


End file.
